Commissioners of Carroll County v. City of Westminster
| Decision Date | 08 April 1914 |
| Docket Number | 7. |
| Citation | 91 A. 412,123 Md. 198 |
| Parties | COUNTY COMMISSIONERS OF CARROLL COUNTY v. MAYOR AND COMMON COUNCIL OF WESTMINSTER. |
| Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
Rehearing Denied May 14, 1914.
Appeal from Circuit Court, Carroll County, in Equity; William H Thomas and Wm. Henry Forsythe, Jr., Judges.
"To be officially reported."
Suit by the Mayor and Common Council of Westminster against the County Commissioners of Carroll County. From a decree for complainant, defendant appeals. Affirmed.
Charles E. Fink, of Westminster, for appellant.
Guy W Steele, of Westminster, for appellee.
PATTISON URNER, STOCKBRIDGE, and CONSTABLE, JJ.
The decree in this case will be affirmed for reasons to be given in an opinion to be hereafter filed.
Decree affirmed, the appellant to pay the costs.
The city of Westminster was created a municipal corporation prior to the year 1860. It was the county seat of Carroll county and remained a part of that county, but the municipal corporation was given certain special, separate, and distinct powers which, with the several amendments to them, were included as a portion of the local laws of Carroll county when those laws were codified in 1888, and they appear in the Code of that year in sections 214 to 254 of article 7 of the Public Local Laws. Among the powers given to the municipal corporation was the control over the streets, roads, and alleys within the corporate limits, whether for the purpose of condemning and opening new highways, or of repairing and maintaining the existing ones. Sections 227 and 228. By sections 229 and 231 there was also vested in the municipal body the power to assess property located within or belonging to residents living within the corporate limits, as established by the Legislature. At the same time, there existed in the county commissioners of Carroll county the general powers vested in the county commissioners by the Code of Public General Laws, and now appearing in the Code (1912), art. 25, § 2.
In the year 1890 the General Assembly passed an act designated as chapter 508 of the acts of that year. By this it was provided:
"That it shall be the duty of the county commissioners of Carroll county to pay annually to the mayor and common council of Westminster, one-half of the amount of taxes levied and collected annually by said county commissioners for road purposes, upon assessable property liable to taxation within the limits of the city of Westminster, to be appropriated and used by the said mayor and common council of Westminster, for the repair, maintenance and improvement of the streets and roads within the limits of said city."
In the year 1891 the county commissioners of Carroll county paid over to the mayor and common council of Westminster from the levy of 1890 the sum of $800, as the proportion due the city from the tax collected by said county commissioners, and which sum of $800 was assumed to represent the one-half of the road taxes levied upon and collected from assessable property within the limits of Westminster, in conformity with the provisions of the act of 1890 just quoted. Since the year 1891 the city of Westminster has annually presented a bill to, and received from, the county commissioners the like sum of $800 per annum, upon an assumption that this was the proper amount of the proportion of taxes collected, to which the city was entitled under the provisions of the act of 1890, and this payment has been made irrespective of whether there was an increase or decrease in the assessable basis, or moneys collected for the road tax of the county, and entirely irrespective of the rate per hundred dollars levied for road purposes in any of the intervening years.
The present bill is filed by the municipal corporation for an accounting upon the part of the county commissioners of the amounts received by them for such road tax in each of the years, and for the payment over of any sum or sums which may be found to be due to the municipal corporation as the result of such accounting, and that without being furnished a list of the assessable property liable to taxation within the limits of the city of Westminster by the municipal authorities. The bill further prays for the rescission of the agreement, if any, between the county commissioners of Carroll county and the mayor and city council of Westminster for the acceptance of $800 as the full share accruing to the city from the annual road levy, and that the receipts which had been given may be deemed as part payment only on account of each annual levy.
The bill was demurred to upon various grounds, which demurrer, after hearing, was overruled. Some of the questions raised under the demurrer may properly be disposed of in limine. Thus the demurrer raised the question of equitable jurisdiction in a case of this character, upon the ground that, if there was any remedy at all, there was a full, complete, and adequate remedy at law. It will be sufficient upon this point to say that the question of adequacy or inadequacy of the remedy at law must depend in each case largely upon the facts of the particular case. The general rules are well and correctly stated in Miller's Equity Procedure, § 721, and in a note to the case of Wiggins v. Bisso, 2 Am. & Eng. Dec. in Eq. (1st Series) 65. An examination of the record in this case satisfies this court that the character of the accounts involved is such as to present a case proper for an equitable accounting, rather than a suit at law. While not technically a bill for discovery, it is in effect such, for there is no means available to the city authorities by which to know with precision the amounts actually collected for such taxes, except the accounts and returns in the possession and control of the county commissioners.
The bill asks that the accounting be furnished without the city giving a list of the assessable property liable to taxation within the limits of the municipal corporation. It is true that the act of 1890 nowhere requires the city to furnish any such list, and there are numerous cases to the effect that, where such an act as this does not contain a provision therefor, the city is not compellable to furnish such a list. On the other hand, it is the city which has invoked the jurisdiction of equity to do justice as between it and the county commissioners. As already noted, the city has the express legislative authority to assess property within its limits for the purposes of taxation, a power which it cannot exercise without making a list of such property. The county commissioners make their assessment by districts, and the seventh district of Carroll county, in which the city of Westminster is located, is, so far as legal requirements are concerned, the smallest division for which the county commissioners can be assumed to have the precise information. Later on it will appear that the demand of the city must be restricted to the year 1908 and subsequent years, and it is therefore placing no undue hardship or burden upon the municipal corporation to require of it, as a condition of demanding and receiving the proportion of the road tax allotted to it by the act of 1890, that it should be required to furnish to the county commissioners a list of the assessable property liable to taxation within the corporate limits.
The county commissioners seek to avoid responsibility for any other or greater sum than the amount of $800 per annum paid over to the city upon the ground of the unconstitutionality of the act. The ground of the supposed invalidity of the act is that it contravenes article 15 of the Bill of Rights, which provides that "every person in the state, or *** holding property therein ought to contribute his proportion of public taxes for the support of the government, according to his actual worth in real or personal property," and that the provision of the act of 1890 would result in unequal taxation. This precise question was directly passed upon in the case of County Commissioners of Prince George's County v. Laurel, 51 Md. 457, and the validity of a similar provision was there sustained; Judge Irving saying:
The conclusion in this case is claimed to have been modified or its value destroyed by the language used by the same judge in a case between the same parties, though arising out of a different act, and reported in 70 Md. 443, 17 A. 388, 3 L. R A. 528. An examination of the latter case, however, discloses a wide distinction between the two cases, and the immediate question of the correctness or incorrectness of the conclusion reached in 51 Md. 457 was in no wise essential to the determination of the subsequent case, nor was that conclusion in any way modified. Substantially the same question has arisen in other states, and the conclusion of Judge Irving in 51 Md. 457, has been adopted, though for different reasons than those assigned by him. In the case of Board of Supervisors of Sangamon County v. City of Springfield, 63 Ill. 66, it was held that the revenues of a county are not the property of the county in the sense in which the revenue of a private corporation is...
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